Embracing BYOD

On 26 November 2012 by Pete Petersen

When it comes down to it, organizations are going to continually find it harder and harder to hold back the demands of users. As more and more powerful and feature-rich devices hit the market, and those devices continue to improve the lives for users, the more difficult it will be for IT to get a handle on the dizzying array of options, choices, devices, and services. Not to mention that one device works well for one user and not well for another–all in the same department. We’ve gotten to the point now where users can work how they work best, constrained less and less by a corporate-chosen device.

Organizations who embrace this change, rather than resist, will find that it is actually a blessing to them–a boon–and comes with savings, more security, and more power to the user.

After all, it’s all about the user. That’s why IT exists: To empower the user by delivering applications that allow them to do what they do better than ever.

Brook at Rogers posted to RedBoard Biz a piece called “An introduction to BYOD for small business,” in which he quotes Virtual Works’ CEO Ed Lacabucci, “You can’t stop it. It’s game over and already happening.”

InfoWorld recently produced a white paper titled “The key to embracing the consumerization of IT” that succinctly (in four pages) describes the dilemma, and the inevitable conclusion of the current trends to BYOD. In the summary of the document (sponsored by Citrix), InfoWorld states,

“As the workplace landscape across the globe changes, IT must address worker demand for even more flexibility and the desire and need to access enterprise applications and data from any location, on any device, at any time, securely. “Desktop virtualization enables IT to fundamentally rethink the way user hardware is provisioned and to manage effective BYO strategies. Adopting a BYO device strategy is one way to proactively embrace the consumerization of IT in a manner that extracts maximum organizational benefit of worker effectiveness and productivity and ensures compliance with acceptable use policies. The end result is a safe and managed way to deliver enterprise applications and data to personal devices—whether owned individually or by the organization.”

Well said. A well-implemented Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is a great place to start. Because of VDI, users can have all of the powerful apps they have today that make them productive and efficient, and yet are still able to choose their own device and the way they work. Their apps and data can be accessed remotely from anywhere in the world, more securely than before since data does not have to leave the data center, and maintenance of the environment is less expensive since the apps and data are centralized so that the techs don’t have to travel to remote locations to empower their users.

As more and more information is understood by IT leaders, more and more environments will move to the centralized, user-empowering model. Refer to a previous post about BYOD Security and scores of others that point to the same inevitable conclusion.

Trackbacks & Pings

[…] Fears Thwarted By Smart Policies, Like It Or Not, BYOD Is Upon Us, Putting BYOD Users First, Embracing BYOD, and BYOD Security . VDI Can Help, some excellent reference articles and whitepapers can be found […]

It’s funny that some of the most powerful products that Microsoft produces...

VDI: The Promise and the Distant Dream

In the quest for centralization, security, control, ease-of-use, and user enablement, some of the best--and worst--implementations can be qualified by the perceived performance from the users' perspective. There is no greater importance than to deliver the applications to the users that enable them to do what they do--to be as productive and efficient as possible. Not much else matters coming out of the data center. As important as other things are; such as backup, anti-virus, redundancy, disaster planning, recovery, and even security; all are for not if the users cannot produce.

VDI is an enabling set of technologies. VDI has been around, in one form or another, since the early 1990s, developed from Terminal Services, Remote Desktop Services, application publishing, and virtual machine hosting. All of these have culminated into a set of well thought-out services that can be implemented and delivered in various ways. Many have witnessed the failure of VDI in their organizations--much of that because of forgotten components, erroneous architecture, and a steep learning curve. Contrarily, there have been outstanding and extremely successful implementations by those who thought of the core components that will make or break the solution, such as storage, profile management, image management, self-service, and simplifying the user experience from end to end. In many instances--indeed, in most instances--where VDI is new to an organization, finding the right partner--one who has been around the block before--is critical to an implementation's success.

One thing is clear: Running into a VDI implementation without first considering all of the components is a recipe for disaster. And finding the right experienced partner is key.